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Point of clarification: When I refer to Republicans in this article I’m referring to Republican leadership

Yesterday a friend linked an article which talked about the approach that Mitch McConnell is taking for the appointment of cabinet members, where he won’t wait for until ethics reviews are completed before holding confirmation hearings. Unsurprisingly, this isn’t the same standard he held the Democratic party to under Obama, where he specifically wrote a letter outlining the requirements before holding hearings. While he believe that these standards are required for the Democrats he doesn’t believe the Democrats should be able to hold the Republicans to the same set of standards, because they lost the election.

I don’t believe that this is arrogance, or even that “Do as I say not as I do” approach. I believe that this comes down to the basic fact that Republican leadership doesn’t believe that have a legitimate right to ever govern, no matter how many people vote for them. To be fair, I don’t believe that this is only applies to Democrats, I believe that it applies to all other political parties.

If we start with this framework, which really began to be applied in the ’90’s with Clinton in office, we can begin to see a behavior, that successfully, stripped authority from the Democratic party. They continually attacked and continued to come up with new ways to attack the Democratic party and ideas until they were gradually pulled more and more right. They used an approach like OODA loop to continually keep the left on their heels. It worked.

However, they truly felt that they didn’t have the right the govern, which is why the Republicans were in the “right” to do this. Moving forward, we can see continually pressuring the right of predominately Democratic leaning voters. Where many organizations like Think Progress and the ACLU believe that the Republican party successfully suppressed voting.

There is something of a virtuous cycle going on for the Republican party when it comes to sidelining and suppressing votes, the more they suppress votes, the more then can sideline strong blue areas, which allows them to continue suppressing votes. They have been able to do this through the repeal of portions of the voter’s rights act which reduced Judicial oversight of state ‘s that had historically racist voting practices, like much of the south. This combine with Gerrymandering which, as the link shows, can be used to take a predominately Democratic district and string them all together so that even if it was 60% Democrat and there were 5 districts Republicans could still win 60% of the votes. This is happening and has happened in the past. In fact, during 2012, there were definitely cases where more Democrats voted in the house elections, but still lost a more seats than Republicans.

With such a concerted effort to continually win more and more power, the only reason why it’s a MUST do, is that the Republicans do not think that the Democrats have the legitimate right to govern the country. They continually undercut their right to govern, in fact, going so far to curb the authority of the Democrat governing coming into power in NC.

Using this perspective, I believe that this further supports the agenda to impeach Trump. However, this will not stop the Republicans as they definitely seem themselves as the only party with the right to govern. This has to change if the US is going to have an effective government for all the people in the near future.

On Saturday I had a going away party in Eindhoven. I’m moving back to Austin tomorrow. I have made some absolutely amazing friends. Friends that have expanded what I think about the world, how the world works and about countries that I never thought I’d make friends from.

It’s been an interesting experience. First living with 7 roommates from all over the world. Walk down stairs and understanding nothing because everyone is speaking Spanish or Urdu. I would then go to class and during the breaks or after class I’d be surrounded by Dutch. With all this going on you’d think I would have done a better job picking up the languages. I know a bit of Dutch, enough to say simple things like “Ik spreek geen Nederlands” or “Spreek je Engels.” Dutch is a hard language to learn because, well it’s a hard language and because nearly the entire country is fluent in English to a level that I can have an in depth discussion about nearly anything.

My friend Greg was telling me that there’s something of a psychological theory related to how Ex-pats adjust to an area they live in. He says that it’s like a parabola. You start out really excited and happy, everything is new and you’re learning a lot. Eventually, the things that were new and interesting become frustrating and just different enough to make it desirable to go home or to be surrounded by people from your culture. It’s easy to understand why there are enclaves of people from the same culture. My Colombian and Mexican friends had the similarity of their languages and a few people that bridged their cultures. I didn’t have anyone from my culture that I was close with, and seeing the closeness of my friends it some times made it even harder because I was essentially adapting to two different cultures at the same time.

During this time, I had to do some growing and try to figure out how to deal with it. I of course continued to throw myself into the two cultures by hanging out with my Dutch friends and my Latin American friends during my first year here. Eventually, after hitting bottom you begin to adjust and accept things are different and figure out ways to work within the system. Things definitely got easier when Brian and Greg moved over here as they are from the US.

I’ve learned so much while being here. Through my education, from my friends from different cultures and just being in a totally different type of place. I’ve learned that I can adapt to truly different and stressful situations. It made me appreciate what I have back in Austin and I think that I’ll be a better friend and husband than I would have been otherwise. I’m more patient and less prone to say rash things. I think that I’ve grown a lot and I can’t help but say it’s because of the support of my friends here and Davianne back home.

Good byes are hard, especially when you know how much of an impact on your life your friends have made. I’d like to thank you all for being in my life and I look forward to continuing to keep in touch. Hopefully I’ll see you in the US and the next time I come to Europe. I also look forward to visiting your countries too!

My friend sent me this email. If women’s rights matter to you, then please read on.

Sandra Fluke is a classmate of mine. You may have heard of her. She’s an inspiring woman who worked with victims of domestic violence before coming to law school on a public interest scholarship. She is the woman who was supposed to testify before congress on birth control but was blocked by republicans. This was the congressional hearing about birth control in which no woman was allowed to testify. The statement she had planned to make was later publicized. Rush Limbaugh completely misrepresented it, called her a slut, and demanded that she post sex tapes online.

Even if you do not believe that birth control should be accessible for contraceptive reasons, or even life-saving medical reasons, I hope you do find it unacceptable for Limbaugh to defame a woman and lie about her testimony. Limbaugh is attempting to bully women out of speaking and create positive publicity for himself. Sign this petition if you want it to backfire on him. http://dccc.org/pages/denounce-rush

Please forward this to anyone you think would be interested in signing.

Yesterday I read an article which explained that a Republican Congressman berated the head of the National Science Foundation for high gas prices. This is pretty distressing because it shows a clear lack of understanding of the goals of the NSF, the role of industry in innovation, consumers and the policies the Republican party and the US government has in place in regard to fuel usage.

First of all, the NSF is an organization that funds cutting edge research that expands the frontier of science. The goal is not to pick winners at that early of a stage. Picking a technology specifically to reduce the cost of fuel would be that. The goal is to pick the best ideas in a broad range of topics and fund several ideas within the same topic to get competing technologies and research groups. They groups can look at the same problem with a different perspective and lead to very different results, which together could lead to a huge break through (if they each don’t get their own break through or the same one). The goal is to create variety. I’m sure there are tons of projects that are focused on creating alternative fuels and increasing the efficiency of our combustion engines. However, the research isn’t going to be commercializable for 10 to 15 years. That’s just how long it takes. The research we’re funding today will be driving our economy through the next decade.

If the Congressman wants a better target to go after, he should look to the car companies. There has been research for a large number of years on engine technology, however not all of it has been used to actually improve efficiency. Some times it’s used to increase the power of the vehicle. They do this because that’s what the consumer wants. Americans love their big powerful cars. There’s no reason why my mother in-law NEEDS to drive the extended Tahoe, but she does – she feels safer in her “Battle wagon.” However, the vehicle gets very low gas mileage, which of course is a double whammy when the prices increase. Huge tank and high prices make it expensive. The more gas the vehicle uses the higher the prices will be going. In Europe the gas prices Americans are complaining about are absurdly low. In the Netherlands it’s something like $8/gallon, around $3 of that is in taxes. However, in those countries there are much more fuel efficient vehicles because they have to be. Many of those countries don’t really want people to be driving.

The same car manufacturers that complain about putting minimum fuel economy standards on cars are able to meet higher standards in Europe. The US government could easily play a role in increasing the standards for new vehicles. They may not be doing enough. Continually increasing the standards with higher gas prices will increase the incentives for manufacturing those vehicles. Especially if the US government provides a customer for those cars. This would ensure that the car companies will be able to sell a minimum number of the vehicles without fear of a complete flop of the technology.